This blog post is all about water! I teach about water in our first unit. It contains so many amazing properties that important to sustaining life. Our first unit it is all about the what is life and the characteristics of all livings. The water section of this unit amplifies what those characteristics are and how water supports life here on earth.
There are a lot of ways to teach these properties, and I have changed it up over the last 10 years...but here is my favorite way thus far.
In the past I would teach all the properties as station rotations. I would create 7-8 stations that would teach each property and kids would get 5-6 minutes at each station and then switch. The problem I found is that we were crunched for time, kids would rush, and just try to get it done. They weren't really comprehending what they were doing and observing.
To combat this, I created a lab that split these stations over 3 days and added direct instruction to the start of each class.
Day 1: Today is all about the structure of water and bonding. To start class we draw a water molecule, discuss polarity, and hydrogen bonding. Students take notes in the a section on their student answer document. Then they are released to complete 3 demos only about the properties just discussed. They complete a modeling demo where they model how molecules bond and how they create hydration shells when dissolving substances. Then they complete a short lab with ice, water, and alcohol. The directions have questions embedded to complete and answer on the student answer document.
Day 2: The next day starts the same, but will cover properties of adhesion and cohesion. The demos for this day include floating paperclips on water and breaking surface tension with soap, pouring water down a string into an empty beaker, and using capillary tubes to demo capillary action using water and alcohol.
Day 3: This day is all about the property of high heat capacity and evaporative cooling. We begin with notes then complete demos with water balloon and air balloon with a heat source. I complete this as a demo instead of letting students do it. Then they use a fan to measure the effects of cooling with water.
Each day has notes to start the class. Then after demos/labs are completed then questions to complete which include drawings and explanations.
Day 4: This day can be spent doing review and synthesizing the information with the characteristics of life we did earlier in the unit.
I start the day with a 3x3 puzzle review. It is one of my favorite ways to review vocabulary terms. Essentially you have a 3x3 set of squares and you will cut out each square individually (9 squares total). Students try to arrange the squares so the vocabulary terms and definitions all match up in the middle.
After they spend 5-10 minutes completing these puzzles for review, I will then go over some of the main points or questions from the labs that we completed previous days.
If there is time or it can go to the next day as well, students will create a poster wrapping up and connecting the ideas of characteristics of life and properties of water. I don't hand out any specific assignment, but just add the directions to a google slide that
I post each day. This isn't meant to be a "project" or even a large grade but used more as a review and assignment to process information. It absolutely could be turned into more of a summative type of assessment. Here is a picture with my directions.
Happy Teaching!
Mrs. Townsend